macOS Do you think Apple will kill Cocoa soon?

[pier]

At this point Carbon is pretty dead. It has been deprecated since 2012 and nobody wants 32 bits apps anyway.

So now with the transition to Swift and all the Obj-C types ****ery it seems inevitable that Apple will release a new SDK 100% in Swift.

Another argument is that Apple could now have a cross platform SDK (macOS/iOS/watchOS/tvOS) which seems the most logical step.

It would not surprise me if Apple announced this new SDK in WWDC18.

 

[casperes1996]

Cocoa is not dying. I won't deny that there'll perhaps be something else that's a middle thing between Cocoa and CocoaTouch, but Cocoa is certainly not dying. It still gets updated all the time and supports both Swift and obj-c.

 

[mfram]

As Apple execs themselves have pointed out multiple times in the big presentations, the UI in iOS is primarily based on touch. The UI on the Mac is primarily based on a mouse. Those are very different things. And if you were to "combine" them, you would probably end up with something that doesn't work well on one or both of those platforms. Of couse, that doesn't mean they won't change their minds later.

For example, the AirPort configuration utility on the Mac was eventually switched from the original Mac-based version to a lightly ported version of the one on iOS. And the interface suffered quite a bit on the Mac.

Swift was specifically designed to be compatible with Obj-C. That doesn't really have anything to do with Cocoa and CocoaTouch.

 

[briloronmacrumo]

Cocoa( i.e. AppKit, Foundation and Core Data ) are fundamental to everything Apple does in both Objective-C and Swift. There might be some future convergence with Cocoa/Cocoa touch to help Apple reduce its own software maintenance( i.e. all the QA/QC for all frameworks on all devices ) but there is no evidence or need for it to disappear.

 

[pier]

but there is no evidence or need for it to disappear

There are a couple of valid reasons. For example leaving behind all the type ****ery between Swift and Obj C or being able to share UI skills between macOS and iOS.

Yes, touch and mouse are different, but the disparity between Cocoa and Cocoa Touch is not IMO the greatest dev experience. I don't expect desktop and mobile to have the same classes, but where they do share a similar thing (button, table view, etc) they should have the same API in all Swift platforms.

 

[Krevnik]

There are a couple of valid reasons. For example leaving behind all the type ****ery between Swift and Obj C or being able to share UI skills between macOS and iOS.

So, there's two ways to address a new language with an existing framework. You can rewrite the framework at a sizable expense, or you can keep making the bridge between the two languages better. I think it's pretty clear which approach Apple is taking. I wouldn't expect a framework written in Swift until after Obj-C itself gets deprecated for Mac/iOS development, and anything like that is maybe a decade out, IMO.

Yes, touch and mouse are different, but the disparity between Cocoa and Cocoa Touch is not IMO the greatest dev experience. I don't expect desktop and mobile to have the same classes, but where they do share a similar thing (button, table view, etc) they should have the same API in all Swift platforms.

I do agree it'd be nice to have better unification between how AppKit and UIKit fundamentally do things. The reality is a bit different, and oddly, Apple seems more interested in not completely ruining back compat in AppKit than porting back the architecture decisions they made with UIKit.

 

[superscape]

Yes, touch and mouse are different, but the disparity between Cocoa and Cocoa Touch is not IMO the greatest dev experience. I don't expect desktop and mobile to have the same classes, but where they do share a similar thing (button, table view, etc) they should have the same API in all Swift platforms.

I'd agree with that.

There are lots of places where Cocoa and Cocoa Touch differ for entirely valid reasons. However, there are lots of places where they differ without good reason. I can't see why Apple would ditch one in favour of the other, but bringing Cocoa and Cocoa Touch a lot closer together and making them more consistent with each other would be a Good Thing in my opinion.